As medical imaging technologies advance, more and more 3D image data sets are acquired by medical scanners and stored in image databases, such as Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS). Such systems contain a huge amount of medical cases that could be of value to radiologists for improving clinical decisions and treatment plans based on this available data.
European patent application entitled “Accessing Medical Image Databases Using Anatomical Shape Information”, filed by Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V on Sep. 29, 2006 under application number 06300994.8 (not disclosed yet), describes a system for retrieving a volumetric data subset comprised in a data storage for volumetric image sets, the system comprising a first query unit for composing a first query for retrieving the data storage for a volumetric image data set comprising the volumetric image data subset; a second query unit for composing a second query for retrieving the volumetric image data set for the volumetric image data subset, the second query comprising anatomical structure information for identifying an anatomical structure within the volumetric image data set; a first determination unit for determining the volumetric image data set, based on the first query; a second determination unit for determining the volumetric image data subset of the volumetric image data set, based on the anatomical structure identified within the volumetric image data set, using the anatomical structure information comprised in the second query; and a retrieval unit for retrieving the determined volumetric image data subset. The system is thus capable of retrieving a reduced amount of data describing the anatomical structure, i.e., a subset of a volumetric image data set, based on anatomical shape information.